The Holocaust Study Tour is an educational tour that motivates and challenges students to rethink one of the most horrific events in history. Traveling through Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland, students make meaningful cultural connections to the people and nations they visit.
Read below to learn more about the trip and it's purpose.
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Mail to:
NMHS
One Snyder Circle
New Milford, New Jersey 07646

Friday, April 10, 2015

Day 4 - Berlin to Prague

DAY
4 - BERLIN / PRAGUE

We
began our last day in Berlin with a stop at a memorial to one of the
lesser known events of the Holocaust. In February 1943 a group of
German Aryan women stood in front of the building at Rosenstrasse 2-4
which was serving as a detention center for Jews who were scheduled
to be deported east. These women were married to Jewish men who had
been rounded up on orders of Joseph Goebbels who wanted to make
Berlin “Judenrein” [Jew-free] as a birthday gift for Hitler. For
one week the women stood in front of the building, chanting “We
want our husbands back!” The Germans set up machine guns,
threatening to fire on them, but the women would not back down.
Finally it was the Nazis who relented, releasing all their husbands,
even bringing back two who had earlier been sent to Auschwitz. The
Rosenstrasse memorial was one built by the Soviets in response to
pressure from citizens who felt the event should be marked and
depicts the events of this week in February 1943 and the heroic
efforts of these women to challenge the Nazi regime and secure their
release. Mr. Barmore informed us that about 2,000 Jewish men would
live out the remainder of the war in Berlin. This represented
another contradiction, he said, as to Nazi policy. The Nazis were so
fixated on the destruction of all European Jewry, to the point, he
said, that when they found out that some Jewish babies had been left
with rural Ukrainian families in an attempt to save their lives, a
special SS squad was sent to the area to find the babies, kill them
and their adoptive Ukrainian parents, and yet they were willing to
allow 2,000 Jewish men to remain in the German capital because of the
women’s protest. This demonstrated, Mr. Barmore said, how even
dictatorships cannot totally disregard public opinion and needs to be
mindful as to what actions might be negatively viewed by the
population. It was also noted that there were many non-Jewish women
across Europe, married to Jewish men, but this type of resistance
only took place here, adding to the complexity of the study of the
Holocaust and human behavior.

Earlier
in the week we had visited the German Historical Museum which gave us
an overview of German history. Today, our final stop would be the
Jewish Museum of Berlin, designed by architect Daniel Libeskind,
which opened in 2001 and focused on 2,000 years of German-Jewish
history. Entering the Museum’s basement brought us to three axes.
Two of them – the “Axis of Exile” and the “Axis of the
Holocaust” focus on the Nazi era. The third axis, the “Axis of
Continuity” leads up several flights of stairs to the exhibition
which takes visitors through two floors of German-Jewish history,
beginning with the first Jewish communities in the Middle Ages,
through Moses Mendelssohn’s contributions to the Enlightenment, the
process of assimilation of Jewish citizens, the Holocaust, and the
rebuilding of the Jewish community in Germany post 1945.

Olaf
began our tour with the Axis of the Holocaust where we entered
through a door to find ourselves in a 24-meter high space, called the
Holocaust Tower, rising from the basement to the roof inside the
building. Empty, unheated, dark, lit only by natural light from a
diagonal opening in the wall, one could hear sounds from outside the
building yet felt so disconnected and separate. Mr. Libeskind called
this room the “voided void”.

In
the Garden of Exile stand 49 titled columns on sloping ground. Olaf
told us that exile meant rescue and safety but arrival in a foreign
country also caused feelings of disorientation. Refugees often had
difficulty gaining a solid foothold in their new home, hence the
uncertain path visitors must walk as they wander through the columns.
Mr. Barmore talked to us about how there was no stability in this
exhibit, but rather the sense of uncertainty which reflected the
difficulty in even trying to understand what, precisely, was the
German Jewish identity.

Mr.
Barmore also spoke to us about the absence of what used to be. He
spoke to us about an area nearby which now nothing stood, but where
once stood a synagogue. “When nothing stands for something, it’s
a loaded nothing,”
he said. “It’s nothing, but with memory, not a simple void,
making this place not just a museum but also a memorial.”

In
one space we came upon a robot which was writing a Torah, which we
all found quite fascinating.

In
another empty space in the building, there was an exhibit by the
Israeli artist, Menashe Kadishman, who called his installation
“Fallen Leaves”, dedicating the more than 10,000 metal faces
covering the floor, to all innocent victims of war and violence. As
the students walked through the void, stepping on the metal faces
which created a cacophony of clanking, they reflected on the
significance of this modern memorial as well as their level of
comfort at walking through it.

As
we continued through the history of Jews in Germany, we came to the
20th
century – commerce, art and film. Jews because of their long
history with commerce, had developed the department store, such as
the large Berlin store, still in existence, Kadewe. Mr. Barmore told
us that while Jews were less than 1% of the German population, they
were 10% of the Berlin population, and on the main commercial street,
Kurferstendam, they were even more prominent, visible, and
economically successful, leading to jealousy. Jews were prevalent in
film which was seen as a degenerate art form and prominent in
journalism which Nazis claimed was the vulgarization of literature.
These arguments played into the Nazi ideology that Jews were a
destructive element in society, incapable of creativity, but who had
a predilection for destroying that which was good in a nation, its
culture.

The
last stop we made in the museum was before a picture of Walter
Rathenau, who, Mr. Barmore said, was the symbol of the one-sided love
affair he had spoken to us about earlier. Walter Rathenau was the
son of Emil Rathenau, a highly successful German Jewish businessman
who had established AEG Incorporated. His son, Walter, was
nominated, following the loss in World War I, as Foreign Minister for
the Weimar Republic and would be sent to Paris to help negotiate what
would become the Treaty of Versailles. Two men, Albert Einstein and
Max Lieberman approached him and begged him to not accept the
nomination, fearing that if anything went wrong, the Jews would be
blamed, Rathenau’s response was that “I am first a German; and
if my nomination helps Germany, I will accept.” Rathenau went to
Paris and he signed the Treaty of Versailles which was rejected by
consensus of German public opinion. A short while later, he would
be shot and killed by a right wing radical. At the trial, Rathenau’s
mother spoke to the mother of the son, and is reputed to have said,
“If your son knew what a good German he killed, he would have
turned his gun on himself.”

We
left the museum and drove to the new train station where we said
goodbye to our Berlin guide, Olaf, and boarded our train for Prague.
The rest of the day was traveling on a five hour train ride through
the beautiful countryside, arriving in Prague at 7:30 p.m. where we
were met by our Prague guide, Kamila who took us to our hotel and
then to dinner at the Municipal House.

5 comments:

I had a chance to view the videos from today and the student reflections. As I watched the "Fallen Leaves" video I myself had a very uneasy feeling and I could only imagine what it was like being there! Keep learning from this wonderful educational experience. I look forward to hearing more from all of you while on your journey!

It's amazing with all that we know about the holocaust, there is still so much we don't know. To see the photo's and video's of all these memorials and monuments, and to read about them on this blog is chilling. The Youtube video was incredible. The expression on the student's faces and the emotion in their voices when discussing the "Fallen Leaves" exhibit was raw, real and spine tingling. This trip is very special indeed . I can't wait to read what's next. Stay safe, look after each other, and keep experiencing.

It's amazing with all that we know about the holocaust, there is still so much we don't know. To see the photo's and video's of all these memorials and monuments, and to read about them on this blog is chilling. The Youtube video was incredible. The expression on the student's faces and the emotion in their voices when discussing the "Fallen Leaves" exhibit was raw, real and spine tingling. This trip is very special indeed . I can't wait to read what's next. Stay safe, look after each other, and keep experiencing.